John Hick­en­loop­er knows the oil and gas in­dustry. He is an oil geo­lo­gist by train­ing, and now those skills might be com­ing in handy as the 61-year-old Col­or­ado gov­ernor finds him­self in the middle of a bal­loon­ing fight over frack­ing, a drilling tech­no­logy that’s key to ex­tract­ing oil and nat­ur­al gas but con­tro­ver­sial for its en­vir­on­ment­al risks. Hick­en­loop­er is con­front­ing con­cerns over frack­ing on mul­tiple levels, in­clud­ing bal­lot ini­ti­at­ives, law­suits, and a vot­ing pub­lic more po­lar­ized than ever. Na­tion­al Journ­al spoke with Hick­en­loop­er over the phone a week after the elec­tions to talk about these is­sues in his state — and why oth­ers should take no­tice. Ed­ited ex­cerpts fol­low.

What does the frack­ing de­bate in Col­or­ado bode for the rest of the coun­try?

I think that we are a har­binger of what’s go­ing to hap­pen across the coun­try, and that’s partly why we’ve really put our shoulder to the wheel try­ing to cre­ate a very ro­bust reg­u­lat­ory en­vir­on­ment.

Col­or­ado is not the only state deal­ing with these is­sues. In dif­fer­ent ways, Wyom­ing, Utah, and Texas all have strong reg­u­lat­ory frame­works. One of the things we’ve talked about — there’s no con­sensus yet — is to get all of our state reg­u­lat­ory lead­ers to­geth­er and say: “Would we be will­ing to com­prom­ise as states and cre­ate a West­ern reg­u­lat­ory frame­work?” — which ob­vi­ously would have a lot of be­ne­fits if we got there.

Three anti-frack­ing meas­ures in Boulder, Fort Collins, and La­fay­ette suc­ceeded by com­fort­able mar­gins in this year’s elec­tion, and an­oth­er — in Broom­field — nar­rowly passed, but only after a re­count last week. An­oth­er re­count is re­quired. Do you think these votes im­per­il your reelec­tion ef­forts for next year’s elec­tion?

I don’t know. If I wor­ried about each de­cision I made and how it af­fects my reelec­tion, I’d give my­self a head­ache. The way we try to do it, we make good de­cisions and have a col­lab­or­at­ive ap­proach and a healthy dose of com­mon sense, and then the reelec­tion will take care of it­self.

We’re see­ing na­tion­al en­vir­on­ment­al groups come in and gal­van­ize loc­al res­id­ents here against frack­ing. This isn’t the first time na­tion­al and out­side in­terests have come in­to Col­or­ado, of course; we saw it with New York City May­or Bloomberg and his gun-con­trol cam­paign. Do you think out­side groups should be as­sert­ing them­selves in the state as much as they are?

It’s not a ques­tion of wheth­er they should or shouldn’t. Col­or­ado is a bell­weth­er state. We didn’t plan this. If you look at 2009, 2010, and 2011, those years at the bot­tom of the Great Re­ces­sion when there were no jobs any­where, more young people moved to Den­ver than any city in Amer­ica. Not per cap­ita, but real num­bers. And I think all those young people com­ing in­to your com­munity means you are go­ing to be on the cut­ting edge of a lot of is­sues like edu­ca­tion re­form, like gun safety, like oil and gas ex­plor­a­tion.

You’ve de­scribed the split-es­tate is­sue as “re­gret­table.” What, if any­thing, can or should be done on this is­sue?

That horse is out of the barn. At this point, all these people own those min­er­al rights. We looked at just a few places like Long­mont, the town we’re in law­suit with, the hold­ings of the min­er­al rights own­ers are im­mense. There’s a lot of rev­en­ue there — tens of mil­lions of dol­lars just around Long­mont. To try and re­vise the split-es­tate would re­quire an un­be­liev­able amount of cap­it­al.

How do you re­act to the so-called “fract­iv­ists” who op­pose all fossil-fuel de­vel­op­ment?

You have to listen to them. I spent 16 years in the res­taur­ant busi­ness. One thing you learn there is when someone is up­set, you don’t ig­nore them, you don’t try to di­min­ish them.

We don’t all use En­cyc­lo­pe­dia Brit­an­nica any­more. People have all these dif­fer­ent facts from all dif­fer­ent dir­ec­tions, and it’s be­com­ing — it’s not talked about — but it’s be­com­ing one of the key is­sues of pub­lic policy: Where do get your facts?

Does cli­mate change con­cern you?

Oh yeah, ab­so­lutely. I try to avoid the fight over how bad is it, is the sky fall­ing, how much of it is man­kind’s fault, be­cause I think there is so much white noise in the data and such heated opin­ions you don’t get very far.

Even if we’re not con­vinced it is go­ing to hap­pen, the very fact is so many of our sci­ent­ists — 95 per­cent of top sci­ent­ists — feel that it is hap­pen­ing very rap­idly, and it is the res­ult of hu­man activ­ity. But even if it was only 50/50, I still think we should be send­ing much more money than we are in­to bet­ter in­stall­a­tions, more fuel-ef­fi­cient cars, get­ting more nat­ur­al-gas vehicles in­stead of re­fin­ing crude oil, all of these things. Most of them don’t cost that much money.

The de­bate over frack­ing in Col­or­ado is po­lar­ized, drown­ing out the ex­amples of where the oil and gas com­pan­ies and con­cerned cit­izens and en­vir­on­ment­al­ists work con­struct­ively to­geth­er. How can you make this bet­ter?

What’s so fas­cin­at­ing to me is the two sides al­most nev­er talk to each oth­er. They don’t sit down in the same room, and I think it’s fair to say one of the sig­ni­fic­ant roles we see gov­ern­ment play­ing in al­most everything is as con­veners. That’s a place where state gov­ern­ment can make sure to fa­cil­it­ate the dis­cus­sion.

Are you con­cerned about ef­forts to get a statewide frack­ing ban on the bal­lot next year?

I’m not aware there is wide­spread ef­fort. I’ve heard a few people men­tion the pos­sib­il­ity. I’m not aware of ag­gress­ive lob­by­ing for it. I think the is­sue for us, we have this poor policy, a hun­dred years ago we cre­ated the split-es­tate. Min­er­al rights un­der the lands are owned of­ten by someone dif­fer­ent than your­self. Our state’s Con­sti­tu­tion guar­an­tees the right to ac­cess those min­er­als. If you’re go­ing to ban frack­ing, you’re say­ing people can’t get ac­cess to their min­er­al rights. His­tor­ic­ally, when the gov­ern­ment does that, there is some com­pens­a­tion. At some level it’s a tak­ings un­der the Fifth Amend­ment. [This clause states that private prop­erty can­not be taken by the gov­ern­ment without com­pens­a­tion.]

There are ru­mors act­iv­ists may push to get a statewide frack­ing ban onto the bal­lot in 2014? What would hap­pen if that passed?

If it was really passed and up­held, it would cer­tainly have severe eco­nom­ic im­pacts. We have pipeline sys­tems, so we could still get nat­ur­al gas to people’s fur­naces. It’s not like we would run out of nat­ur­al gas. It would be stop al­most all drilling. You can’t drill eco­nom­ic­ally without frack­ing any­more.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) are threatening to block the spending bill—and prevent the Senate from leaving town—"because it would not extend benefits for retired coal miners for a year or pay for their pension plans. The current version of the bill would extend health benefits for four months. ... Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on Thursday afternoon moved to end debate on the continuing resolution to fund the government through April 28. But unless Senate Democrats relent, that vote cannot be held until Saturday at 1 a.m. at the earliest, one hour after the current funding measure expires."

Source:

PARLIAMENT VOTED 234-56

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CLOSED FOR INAUGURAL ACTIVITIES

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2.1 PERCENT IN 2017

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SHUTDOWN LOOMING

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